Inside story: Stewart's Grove

Dominic Elwes was a misfit in Lord Lucan's set. Roger Wilkes visits the scene of his suicide

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the suicide of artist Dominic Elwes ended a dark, unsettling episode in the intractable mystery of Lord Lucan. It happened in this narrow Chelsea street of mid-Victorian mews cottages, a few yards from the busy Fulham Road.

Lucan's legacy: Alison and Nicholas Taggart who bought the cottage, the scene of Dominic Elwes' suicide 25 years ago

Elwes was one of Lucan's closest friends from his Eton schooldays. In September 1975, less than a year after the murder of Lucan's children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, and his infamous disappearance, Elwes was found dead at 1 Stewart's Grove. At 44, he had been hounded to death - critics said - by some of Lucan's vicious circle of gambling cronies. Fame is fleeting, even in death. "We never knew he'd ended it all here," confesses barrister Nicholas Taggart, 35, the current owner. "To be honest, we'd never even heard of him." Mr Taggart and his solicitor wife Alison, 34, bought the cottage six years ago for £215,000.

The terrace of 10 two-up, two-down houses first accommodated workers building the Great Exhibition site in 1851. Original ceiling roses and corbels survived a £150 knock-through in 1964, but the house faces east, catching only the morning sun. As Mr Taggart points out: "An artist like poor Mr Elwes would have been pushed for natural light."

When the Taggarts moved in, the cottage had stood empty for 18 months. It was cold and damp, but they detected no vestige of the tormented soul that was Dominic Elwes in the weeks before his death. After Lucan's disappearance in November 1974, police quickly encountered what one commentator typified as the "condescending, almost patronising attitude" of some of Lucan's friends, the "nob squad". At least one witness was allegedly ordered to keep quiet and to seek a briefing before talking to detectives.

Elwes was something of a misfit in the glamorous Lucan set. He was a social gadfly, a talented mimic and entertainer. In the 1950s, gossip columns had reported his elopement to Havana with 18-year-old heiress Tessa Kennedy, "wealthy god-daughter of Princess Marina", in defiance of a High Court order. The escapade cost him two weeks in Brixton Prison. The couple parted after eight years. While his father Simon had been a successful portrait painter, Elwes was heavily in debt.

His role in the aftermath of Lucan's disappearance was revealed by the journalist James Fox in the Sunday Times Magazine. On the day after the murder, Elwes had attended a gathering of Lucan's inner circle, a lunch hastily arranged by John Aspinall, founder of the Clermont Club, to discuss what might have happened to him. Elwes was uneasy with the black propaganda being leaked about Lucan's estranged wife, Veronica, who had only narrowly survived a terrifying, murderous attack. Lady Lucan was hospitalised, wounded and shocked. Of her husband's cronies, only Elwes bothered to visit her. Lucan, on the other hand, was portrayed as the perfect gentleman and model husband.

But Elwes knew that Lucan's fortunes had been crumbling as fast as his marriage. Despite this, the missing earl had led what Elwes called "a hypercivilised patrician kind of life". Although Lucan turned a hard, unsmiling face to the world, Elwes told Fox, he had taught himself the piano, disguising this side of his character "because people would have thought it soppy".

Fox's article cast Lucan in an unfavourable light. When it appeared in June 1975, Lucan's friends exacted cruel retribution from Elwes. They learnt that he had been paid £200 to paint a portrait, verging on caricature, of the Clermont set. This had been used to illustrate the article, together with several private photographs that they accused him of selling. The artist-clown had, as author Patrick Marnham put it, placed himself "on the other side of the green-baize door, the jester as social critic". His portrait was regarded as the ultimate betrayal. He was barred from Annabel's, the fashionable nightclub.

Ostracised, Elwes was reduced to tears. A friend who considered him to be close to a nervous breakdown sent him abroad to recuperate. When he returned in August, he found the Lucan set implacably turned against him. A chronic victim of manic depression, Elwes had tried to kill himself before. On Friday September 5, he climbed the spiral staircase at 1 Stewart's Grove for the last time.

A friend who failed to raise him on the phone drove over and let herself in. In his bedroom the light was on and the curtains were drawn. "Dominic was lying across the bed wearing only his pants," she told the coroner. There was a note, a will and a bottle of barbiturates. Verdict: suicide.

At Elwes's memorial service, the critic Kenneth Tynan declared that while "certain people" had elected him their court jester, they had never really accepted him. One of those people, John Aspinall, then addressed the congregation, reminding them of Elwes's failure to find the fame he had sought. To Elwes's friends and family, all this smacked of heartless humbug. Afterwards, on the steps outside, a cousin of Elwes punched the Clermont owner hard on the jaw, shouting: "That's what I think of your bloody speech, Aspinall."

A quarter of a century later, there has been a total turnover in the residents of Stewart's Grove. At his tiny Chelsea house, the shades of the Clermont set have been banished, along with the carpets of 1970s beige. The Taggarts have redecorated in blue and painted the outside terracotta. They have planning permission for a £50,000 first-floor conservatory to flood the house with daylight. Even without it, the house would make £425,000, say Marcus Lawler of agents John D Wood. The little houses are currently very popular. "They don't come on the market very often and, when they do, they go quickly." Selling would not be a problem, even with its melancholy history of the butterfly broken on the wheel.

"People of our age were only 10 at the time of the Lucan case," explains Mr Taggart, "so I'm not sure that the Elwes link would have much resonance."